


Rising Thermals

by fadagaski



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen, How Do I Tag, Literary Style
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-05
Updated: 2016-06-05
Packaged: 2018-07-12 09:54:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7097893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fadagaski/pseuds/fadagaski
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a green place, but it's not <em>the Green Place</em>. She can still see all the places where her past has clawed the walls.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rising Thermals

**Author's Note:**

> When you find a fic you don't remember writing ...

Rising on the elevator is almost like flying. Furiosa tries to breathe in the air of freedom and finds it gets stuck in her lungs. A car blurs into dust on the horizon, and she feels the pull in her blood like a magnet to true north.

 

There are no seasons at Citadel. Plants grow and die. People grow and die. Furiosa counts the days one after the other with little variation. She paces the circumference of the gardens, toes scuffing the very edge. Pebbles crumble down the sheer rockface. The wind whips between the strips of her shirt, scouring her with sand blown from afar. 

 

So much green. She spends weeks in the gardens stroking her fingers over soft leaves and delicate stems. It is a strange thing, to be a woman of molten steel amongst nature. To be able to touch without breaking.

It's a green place, but it's not the Green Place. She can still see all the places where her past has clawed the walls.

 

"You were almost called Kite," Aunt Athena says, knitting needles clacking in the shade of a wrought apple tree, "but you were born too angry to be quiet."

 

There’s a dust devil on the horizon. Furiosa shields her eyes against the sun and watches it writhe into life, and vanish just as quickly. 

“Could be him,” Dag says. Her hand strokes over the full moon of her belly. 

 

The wind shrieks, snapping branches and ripping off roofs. Furiosa stands at the top of the tallest pillar with her arms wide and screams into the storm and it does not touch her. 

Amongst the ruins of the garden the next morning, she looks around and is numb. It doesn’t feel like her home. It doesn’t feel like her pain. 

There’s a patch of the horizon to the north that’s smeared like a bruise. 

Broken stems are strange, unknown, but blood and bruises run deep within her.

 

Dag is good with a needle and ink. Furiosa finds them in the scarlet light at sunset, the baby sleeping strapped to her back, Cheedo curled around her own bent knees as Dag bites into her skin in agonising inches. Cheedo is strong, revered, but her skin is soft and fragile; it breaks so easily. Dag sponges away the welling blood and drives the needle in again.

“It’s for you,” Cheedo says. Furiosa can make out a fierce beak and wide wings.

“What will it be?”

“You’ll see.”

 

She does see. On the day when she turns left instead of right at the stairs, and winds down and down and down. Her head aches as if someone is squeezing her skull inwards.

At the base the sisters are waiting with a bike. Furiosa swings a leg over, turns the key and revs the engine. It’s like sitting on a storm. 

Their goodbyes are short and sweet. No promises are made to meet again. When they turn to go back home, Furiosa sees on Cheedo’s back: a bird in flight, its feathers made of fire, beak open and screaming to the heavens.


End file.
